Do you use separate Netflix profiles to manage the separate video preferences of your household members? Whatever you do, don’t lose your passwords. Eric and his wife have learned this the hard way. They’re locked out of his wife’s profile, and have no way to get back in. Netflix’s response? They’ve shrugged.

My wife has been unable to log into her account. I tried to edit her profile to change the password, but received a message that it was temporarily unavailable. I called to inquire about the problem, and was told that profiles were broken and that they might not be fixed for months. When I asked what they could do for me, I was offered two options:

1) They could merge all DVDs from my profiles into the main profile, or
2) They could e-mail me a list of the queues from my profiles so I’d know what DVDs would be sent to me, but I wouldn’t be able to log in to change the priority.

Unsatisfied, I asked to speak with a manager, and was told the problem had been going on for about a month and a half. No e-mail has gone out to customers to explain this issue. When I asked what could be done to compensate me for the problem, I was told that marketing was gauging customer reaction before coming up with a compensation plan. Which means they’re not letting customers know there’s a problem that they’ll only compensate customers for if enough people realize the problem and call in to complain. Those of us who do notice and are locked out of a profile have no options.

If you have your account credentials, you’re fine and won’t know there’s a problem, but if you lose your password, there is nothing Netflix can do to get you back into it.

Lesson learned: don’t misplace your password. If you’re experiencing the profile problem and it’s putting a crimp in your DVD-watching, let us know.

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